THE GARDENER BIRD.
IN the last number of the Gardener's Chronicle, a very curious account is translated for that journal, and illustrated with engravings by a traveller in New Guinea,—Signor Odoardi Beccari, —of a new species of Bower Bird, very similar in its habits to the Australian Bower Birds of which Mr. Darwin gives so striking an account in the second volume of his " Descent of Man." This new Papuan variety is called the Amblyornis inornata, and is, in fact, a Bird of Paradise in plain-clothes, without the gorgeous costume that is usually associated with the name. It is, says Signor Beccari, about the size of the ordinary turtle-dove, and both the male and the female appear to have a plumage of the most unostentatious description,—their feathers only showing a few different varieties of brown. But it would be a very mistaken inference to suppose that bright colouring is not enjoyed and valued by these birds. They appear, indeed, to be birds of great capacity for the plastic arts. They are wonderful actors,—in the sense of presenting accurately the voices and notes of a great variety of other birds, so as to deceive completely those who are in search of them. " It is a clever bird," says Signor Beccari, " called by the inhabitants Buruk Gurea,—' Master Bird,'—aince it imitates the songs and screamings of numerous birds so well, that it brought my hunters to despair, who were but too often misled by the bird. Another name of the bird is Tukan Robon, which means ' a gardener,'" and in fact, the chief peculiarity of the bird is its great taste for landscape gardening, in which art it seems to excel almost all the Bower Birds. Signor Beccari apparently regards the bower he describes as the bird's "nest," but unless the New Guinea variety differs in this respect from the other kinds of birds of this description, he was probably mistaken in this. Mr. Darwin says distinctly, " The bowers, which, as we shall hereafter see, are highly decorated with feathers, shells, bones, and leaves, are built on the ground for the sole purpose of courtship, for their nests are formed in trees." We should think it most likely that this is the case also with the New- Guinea species. And if so, the beautiful arbours described and illustrated by Signor Beccari, are mere places of social resort, like our marquees or tents for picnics ; and though so much more beautiful, are much more durable also, for Signor Beccari says that the Amblyornis bowers last for three or four years, which our marquees, even in that climate, hardly would. And the beauty of the structure shows how far superior these birds are to human beings in their msthetic architecture. They select for their bowers a flat space round a small tree, the stem of which is not thicker than a walking-stick, and clear of branches near the ground. Round this they build a cone of moss of the size of a man's hand, the object of which does not seem to be explained, but may be perhaps merely to make a soft cushion round the tree in parts where the birds are most likely to strike against it. At a little height above this moss cushion, and about two feet from the ground, they attach to the tree twigs of a particular orchid (Dendrobium), which grows in large tufts on the trunks and branches of trees, its twigs being very pliant, and weave them together, fastening them to the ground at a distance of about eighteen inches from the tree all round, leaving, of course, an opening by which the birds enter the arbour. Thus they make a conical arbour of some two feet in height and three feet (on the ground) in diameter, with a wide ring round the moss cushion for promenading ; and here they are sheltered from the elements, and have a pavilion of the most delicate materials. They appear to select this particular orchid for their building, because, besides the extreme pliancy, the stalks and leaves live long after they are detached from the plant on which they grow. Both leaves and stalks remain fresh and beautiful, says Signor Beccari, for a very long period after they have been plaited in this way into the roofing of the arbour.
But all birds are great architects, and the only peculiarity
in this respect of the Bower Bird is that it builds separate structures for domestic life and for social amusement;—that its house is not its pavilion for pleasure, but a different kind of structure altogether. The Bower Birds, however, are still more remarkable for laying out pleasannces round their pavilions, than even for building these special resorts for social amusement. The Satin Bower Bird, says Mr. Darwin, " col- lects gaily-coloured articles, such as the blue tail-feathers of parakeets, bleached bones and shells, which it sticks between the twigs or arranges at the entrance. Mr. Gould found in one bower a neatly-worked stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotton, evi- dently' procured from a native encampment. These objects are continually rearranged and carried about by the birds whilst at play. The bower of the Spotted Bower Bird is ' beautifully lined with tall grasses, so disposed that the heads nearly meet, and the decorations are very profuse.' Round stones are used to keep the grass-stems in their proper places, and to make divergent paths leading to the bower. The stones and shells are often brought frcm a great distance. The Regent Bird, as described by Mr. Ramsay, ornaments its short bower with bleached land- shells belon&ing to five or six species, and with ' berries of various colours, blue, red, and black, which give it, when fresh, a very pretty appearance. Besides these, there were several newly picked leaves and young shoots of a pinkish colour, the whole showing a decided taste for the beautiful.'" And now to this description is to be added Signor Beccari's description of the greatest of landscape gardeners amongst birds, —who makes himself first a lawn of moss before the bower,— the Papuan grass, like all tropical grass, is probably of the poorest and coarsest kind, and quite incapable of anything like the velvet smoothness of an English lawn,—and then strews this mossylawn with the most beautiful flowers and fruits it can find, so arranged as to produce the same effect as the flower-bed of an English garden, or more exactly, perhaps, the flower-strewn turf of an English churchyard. The Gardener Bird is very careful to keep its lawn free from any disfigurement, and though it does not seem to have invented a garden-roller, the moss probably is a material which does not need such an instrument. This is what Signor Beccari says :—" Before the cottage there is a meadow of meas. This is brought to the spot, and kept free from grass, stones, or anything which would offend the eye. On this green turf, flowers and fruits of pretty colour are placed, so as to form an elegant little garden. The greater part of the decoration is collected round the entrance to the nest, .and it would appear that the husband offers there his daily gifts to his wife. The objects are very various, but always of vivid colour. There were some fruits of a Garcinia like a small-sized apple. Others were the fruits of Gardenias of a deep-yellow colour in the interior. I saw also small rosy fruits, probably of Scitaminaceous plant, and beautiful rosy flowers of a splendid mew Vaccinium (Agapetes amblyornidis). There were also fungi and mottled insects placed on the turf. As soon as the objects are faded, they are moved to the back of the hut." So that the Gardener Bird carefully renews the beauty of his garden. Just as the gardener takes away the flowers whose bloom is over, and replaces them with new ones whose beauty is still fresh, so the Amblyornis removes to the back of its pavilion all the faded flowers and fruits, and renews the colouring on its lawn by a fresh supply. Thus at least three of the plastic arts are pursued by this remarkable bird, and all of them apparently from artistic feeling, rather than from any domestic want. As we have seen, it is a great actor, deceiving the most experienced ear, by rendering in tarn the songs and screams of all its various companions. It is a great architect, and this, again,—if the analogy of the other Bower Birds may be trusted,—not in the interest of family life, but of the lighter social amusements of its tribe. And it is a great gardener, making artificially for itself a lawn of moss, and dis- posing on this lawn all the beautiful colouring with which the blossoms and fruits of the neighbourhood supply it. Signor Beccari contrasts its habits in this way with those of the human inhabitants of the neighbourhood. " I discovered," he says, " that the inhabitants of Arfak did not follow the example of the Amblyornis. Their houses are quite inaccessible from dirt."
Indeed, the sense of beauty and of art which these Bower Birds seem to possess is so great, that we may well imagine it possible that they may, to some extent, generalise upon the principles of art, and that amongst these plain, brown-clad Birds of Paradise there may be some germinal Burkes, or even rudimentary Ruskins. If such there be, what, we wonder, are the principles of beauty which 'reeommend themselves to these winged devotees of the plastic arts? Do they, perhaps, believe, as our theorists upon art do, that there
is no true art in imitation,—nor indeed without an expression of the mind of the artist ? Would they not maintain, perhaps,—if they could expressly maintain anything,—that the key to a true picture consists in the bird-thought,—the " aviary element,"—which gives it unity ; that the secret of beauty in their bowers, and mossy lawns, and in the flowers and fruits of various colours strewn thereupon, is never in the mere form and colour, but rather in the explicit reference to the feelings of the brown birds which thus lay down their offerings, and the other brown birds to whose affections and hopes these offerings appeal ? Our own artists assure us that landscape, however beautiful, is naught without the "human element" to give it meaning. Do the Birds of Paradise think the same,—substi- tuting, of course, the ' aviary ' for the human' element? When he looks at the Papuan forests and fruits, does the Amblyornis think of them merely with a view to the nests or the bowers and gardens for which they are available ? If he could picture nature as delicately as be can build, and as he can arrange colour, would he find fault with any landscape in which there was nothing better than a human interest, unless indeed that human interest happened also to involve an aviary' interest,— in other words, unless the men concerned were intending to bring about tragedies among the birds ? Certainly, if the great artistic teachers of our own society are right, this should be so ; and Art should have a different meaning for each species of creature capable of conceiving in any degree what Art means. Yet, so far as we can see, the ideas of beauty and art entertained by the Bower Birds, though very rudimentary indeed, are entirely of one piece and one origin with the more developed ideas of the human race.
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